Celebrating a merry and bright future at Immerse
From pumpkins on the porch to resolutions for happier, healthier new year, this is the season of gratitude, where we break bread and celebrate another year with the people we love, surrounded by family and friends and neighbors who fill our cups with kindness and joy.
At Immerse, this is the season where we pause and reflect on all of the wins over this past year, big and small, which have enabled us to expand the impact we’re making on the lives of the youth from crisis in Arkansas—youth whose lives have been deeply marked by abuse, neglect, and trauma.
2023 has, without a doubt, been an extraordinary year for all of us at Immerse. It has been a year of growth and building, of doing whatever it takes to create a merry and bright future for each of our youth. Over the next few weeks, we are sharing some of our 2023 milestones, all of which are the direct result of your generous support. Because of you, our donors and community partners, these milestones are helping us build a strong foundation to serve even more youth from crisis in 2024—and in the many years to come!
Great news! Thanks to an outpouring of support from the community, we have fulfilled the matching opportunity extended by a handful of generous donors! Thank you to everyone who helped us achieve this goal.
Your support is still needed to help as we work to provide and strengthen support for youth from crisis in 2024, and we look forward to celebrating the grand total given with you soon.
Please consider a generous donation today.
No matter the season, Immerse is the place that our Overcomers call home. Overcomers like Chary’Elle. Be sure to take a moment to watch the video below and learn how Immerse, with the support of our community, has helped Chary’Elle experience breakthrough and take steps towards a merry and bright future.
The station
We started 2023 with a renewed sense of purpose to do whatever it takes to help youth from crisis in Arkansas.
Youth ages 18-24, many of whom have aged out of the foster care system, are uniquely vulnerable to homelessness. Without stable housing and a support system to help them successfully launch into adulthood, these youth are often forced to make the tough choice to sleep on the streets because they feel safer there than they do in adult shelters. Last year, on any given night, more than 100 youth were sleeping on the street in Central Arkansas.
After years of planning, we officially broke ground for The Station Youth Shelter on May 2, 2023. The Station is Arkansas’ first shelter created specifically for youth ages 18-24 and will feature 15 suites that include a bedroom and bathroom, a shared kitchen and recreation space, counseling services, and outdoor facilities.
The Station will protect the youth in our community during a vulnerable time, while also integrating them into our evidence-based youth programming. We anticipate serving 100 youth within the first year of opening.
For us, and for the youth we serve, The Station is a dream come true. As we look ahead to 2024, we can’t wait to open our doors and welcome youth to a space that offers protection for now and possibilities for the future.
Conway Expansion
At Immerse, we believe that together, we can build an expansive pathway to healing for every youth from crisis in Arkansas. That means meeting youth right where they are—in their own communities. In October, we were thrilled to open our doors in Conway, Arkansas!
We wanted to open our second site in a community that would come together to make a difference in the lives of Arkansas youth, a community defined by hospitality, neighborliness, and the spirit of service—that’s why we knew that Conway would be the perfect fit for our second location!
“We’re thrilled to embark on the building of this pathway in Conway. Through conversations with DCFS, community leaders and partners, and foster and adoptive families, it became clear that Conway would be an ideal city to grow Immerse’s support.”
Our Conway office is the ideal setting for our LifeBASE Teen program, since much of our work often takes place in homes. This transitional program is specifically designed for teens 14-18 who are in foster care or who have been adopted. We work with each teen and foster/adoptive family to meet their unique needs by providing them with training and one-on-one support.
The most exciting part of this expansion is that we’re just getting started! In 2024 and beyond, we plan to continue to expand to meet youth where they are in their own communities, with the ultimate goal of adding three more sites over the next three years. Right now, we are actively working to identify where the highest concentration of needs are and where we can have the greatest impact.
With the help of our generous supporters, we are looking forward to growing our impact so that we can create merry and bright futures for even more youth across Arkansas!
The Immerse arkansas therapist fellowship program
At Immerse, we are committed to providing quality, accessible therapy to youth from crisis when they need it most. Therapy is a vital resource we provide to our youth, because therapy is how our youth transition out of crisis and experience healing.
In October of this year, Blue & You Foundation announced that we were the recipients of a grant for behavioral health innovation, which includes growing our therapy team and increasing our expertise through a Therapist Fellowship Program. This grant will enable us to hire four more trauma therapists, as well as an additional recreational therapist with trauma-informed training.
“Therapy here at Immerse has helped calm me and my life down…I’m focused right now on the positive areas in my life rather than focusing on the negatives, and really working through my family issues. I’m excited that I was invited back home for Thanksgiving, and I’m feeling like my family is actually in my corner for once”
“One of the significant benefits of providing youth in crisis with intentional recreational activities is safely exposing them to new and challenging experiences. Hiking up a mountain, climbing up a cliff-face, canoeing down a river, riding a horse, or conquering a ropes course are the kinds of experiences that, when combined with deep mentoring relationships and peer encouragement, help build and reinforce the life skills and personal beliefs necessary for youth to overcome obstacles in life. Having two recreational facilitators will greatly expand our ability to provide these opportunities to youth." - Justin Kirkes, Recreational Facilitator
The goals of the Immerse Arkansas Therapist Fellowship Program include accelerating healing for the youth and families we serve, as well as improving Arkansas’ ability to provide first-class mental health care for teens and young adults. The Fellowship Program will have a tremendous impact on the health and well-being of Arkansas’ youth, and it is just one more way we’re helping provide a merry and bright future for our Overcomers into 2024 and beyond!
Ardelia Rodgers, who leads our Therapist Fellowship Program, says, “With your support, we're expanding vital mental health support for homeless youth, providing them a pathway to healing, hope, and a brighter future. Your commitment to the well-being of our community's most vulnerable is truly changing lives.”
Strengthening support for more overcomers
But what we’re most proud about this year? Our youth. They are the reason why we do what we do, because we believe that each and every youth from crisis has the potential to become an Overcomer—that their lives have purpose and value. For us, championing these Overcomers is a privilege.
So far in 2023, we have supported nearly 400 youth, helping them heal from abuse, neglect, and trauma and experience breakthrough. To date, we have hosted over 180 transformational experiences, and over 70 youth are in therapy.
No matter how long our Overcomers have been at Immerse—whether its 18 hours or 18 months—we are committed to walking alongside them, every step of the way, as they work hard to accomplish their goals and make their dreams a reality.
Each and every day, we feel a deep sense of gratitude for our community of supporters, who have helped these youth experience a restored vision of their future and become Overcomers through unconditional relationships and wraparound support. With our community’s support—with your support—each youth wins.
This holiday season, we invite you to make a gift of support to help us build an expansive pathway to help youth from crisis experience breakthrough and healing. Because of supporters like you, we are making an incredible difference in the lives of the youth we serve.
Click the link below to give our Overcomers the gift of a merry and bright future!